Business Luncheon in Geneva with Admiral Giuseppe De Giorgi (retd.), Former Chief of the Italian Navy

"The Migration Odyssey: Power Struggle in the Mediterranean Sea"

In association with the Italian Chamber of Commerce for Switzerland (CCIS)

Throughout history – ancient and modern – the Mediterranean Sea (Mare Nostrum, as the Ancient Romans referred to it) has been a critically strategic and vital highway for transport, trade, cultural exchange, conflict and migration.

Cultures as rich and diverse as Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Canaanite, Phoenician, Hebrew, Carthaginian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Ottoman, Christian and Islamic are all better understood when the history of the Mediterranean is fully appreciated.

In modern times the Mediterranean has become the theatre of many strategic interests, and for a variety of different reasons. Italy, France, the United Kingdom, the USA and Russia all have their own aims and objectives regarding these important waters.

On top of these strategic interests, and since the outbreak of conflict in central Africa, the Horn of Africa, Libya and Syria, must be overlaid unprecedented amounts of mass migration from the coast of North Africa and the Middle East: a veritable Odyssey on a scale never experience before; and, as grist to the grisly mill, huge criminal activity in the transporting of migrants and refugees.

How to make sense of all that is happening? Admiral Giuseppe De Giorgi, our Guest of Honour, will go a long way to helping us understand these complex issues. He is a former Chief of the Italian Navy and Head of Operation Mare Nostrum – the Italian Government’s valiant, humanitarian effort on behalf of the desperate migrants in distress in the Mediterranean.

What can be done to reduce the flow of migrants? Who bears responsibility? What are the objectives of the states able to project power into the Mediterranean? What are their strategic interests? These questions and many others will be addressed by this most experienced of Italian naval leaders.

Admiral De Giorgi was Chief of Staff of the Italian Navy from 2013 to 2016 and served as Commander in Chief of the Naval Fleet from 2012 to 2013. In 2006, he was Commander of the Maritime Task Force of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and has conducted numerous other crucial operational roles – among them the rescue in 2014 of the MS Norman Atlantic - in a naval career lasting over forty years.